I actually…don’t know. Don’t know my mom’s side at all, beyond stories of them being Irish alcoholics, dreamers and worse. (My mom’s never said anything bad about her sister but she does not keep in touch).
My dad’s side is the more pragmatic, germanic-attitude side, and I am probably more that side. Looks-wise, though, um…my mom, I guess. Hazel eyes and non-blonde hair, whilst my dad’s side is predictably dirt-blonde and blue-eyed. One might guess I was adopted until one’d been around us for more than five minutes; there’s definitely a certain ‘attitude’ that we attribute to being a “<last name”>, but which my mom fits in well with also.
I take after Mom’s side – specifically, my paternal grandfather’s side. Fat, mostly redheaded, fair skinned and most are a little off their rockers. I’m one of the more normal ones. From my maternal grandmother’s side I got the musical ability; almost everyone can sing and most of us play at least 1 instrument.
Dad’s side … lots of alcoholics. Kinda rough around the edges but most are/were very good people. (Dad wasn’t one of 'em.) Mostly hardworking, blue collar types, not much for higher education but certainly not stupid by any means. Hand them a hammer, nails and some wood and they’ll slap together whatever you want built, and they don’t even need to sit down and sketch it out first, either. This was astonishing to me when I met that side of the family, that they could just up and DO that. Nobody on that side is musical, or a writer, or into anything that doesn’t involve building shit or fixing shit.
Hard to tell. Both sides are jovial, happy, financially successful, law abiding, etc. My mom’s side tend to be more small-town, teetotallers, and generally involved in some sort of profession that ties them to the land (farms, ranches, oil and gas). My dad’s side is much more gregarious, drinking, city-dwellers and tend to favor “mechanical” pursuits, for lack of a better term. They are a bunch of engineers (both train and desk), pilots, ship-captains, truck drivers, etc.
The only sharply significant difference is in longevity. Mom’s side tends to live normal life-span and COPD/Alzheimers in declining years. Dad’s side is apparently descended from Methuselah himself. I’m in my late fifties, and still have grandparents on my dad’s side. My mom’s parents passed away over 30 years ago.
Based on the careers I’ve had, I guess I favor my dad’s side most (truck-driver, pilot, desk-bound engineer). I did work in the oil patch for awhile as a youngster, so who knows? Hopefully I inherited their longevity genes, but only time will tell.
Both, neither? I don’t really know. I have a very very strange family, I’ve not seen/spoken to anyone on my father’s side of the family in 20 years, and I hardly ever see/speak to anyone on my mother’s side of the family. I can’t go off visiting people as and how I want, and I was never allowed to use the phone when I was a teen so I never learned how to chat on the phone. And none of them make any effort to visit/call me. I know many of them are under the delusion that I live the life of Riley sponging off my mother. They are wrong. Very very wrong.
When my father died, no one from his side came to the funeral. Admittedly they burying them quick around here (two days after he died), which really didn’t give people a chance to come here from the UK. One of my brothers made all the phone calls and said that most of them just grunted “thanks for phoning” and didn’t ask about the funeral.
I have no idea if there was some big family feud on either side at some point in time or are they all just weird!
